Communications has traditionally progressed towards faster mechanisms for transmission. Individuals and businesses moved from mail service to courier service for important communications. Then, individuals and businesses moved from courier service to facsimiles. Today, e-mail is fast replacing facsimiles for both personal and business communications.
Significant efforts have been made to facilitate e-mail communications. In addition, efforts have been made to help assure that recipients receive important e-mails.
U.S. Patent Publication 2002/0032020 to Brown describes an e-mail alert system where, when a person is sent an e-mail and he or she is not in the vicinity of his or her computer, he or she is informed of the e-mail by an “alert” apparatus (e.g., a PDA, phone, pager, radio, television, buzzer, lights, or an audible device). Thus, Brown is concerned with the “recipient” being able to timely obtain e-mails and to respond to them. The recipient could, for example, receive a page notifying him of the presence of an e-mail so that he or she could then log on to a computer and retrieve the e-mail.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,620,735 to Salim describes an e-mail system with voice interactivity. In Salim, for example, one could enter an e-mail which, rather than being sent electronically to a recipient, is directed to a service which places a call to the intended recipient and audibly reads the substance of the e-mail to the recipient. Salim also contemplates being able to convert oral answers into text which is sent as an e-mail.
One of the problems with any form of communication is assuring that a recipient receives an e-mail that a sender wants the recipient to receive. With couriers, the sender can require the recipient to sign for the document, and, once it is signed for, the sender can be notified of its receipt. With facsimiles, the sender can receive a confirmation transmission indicating that the document was successfully transmitted. With e-mails, the sender can receive an acknowledgment response when an e-mail is opened. However, many people receive a large volume of e-mails and may not open them. Further, many people use screening tools to screen out e-mails believed to be “junk mail” or “spam”. Thus, with e-mails there is less surety than with other forms of communications that a document has been received, and this makes e-mail communications less reliable for certain personal and business communications.
While there are a number of technologies similar to U.S. Patent Publication 2002/0032020 to Brown where the “recipient” can take active control in his or her being able to timely obtain e-mail communications, there has not been developed an effective method or system which the “sender” of the e-mail can be assured that the recipient is notified that he or she has recieved an e-mail that is important and that he or she should read it.